Gardens

Green Cone

Omnivorous composting

I was more burdened by wet garbage than I thought, and more relieved than I expected by a fiendishly simple device called the Green Cone.

Regular composters are notoriously picky: no bones, no meat, no oil, no avocado pits or shells, no citrus peels, no dairy products. The Green Cone happily devours all that stuff, which means that pretty much all your kitchen waste can go in it, right now. File and forget.

All you need is some yard and a spot that gets sunshine. The Cone’s perforated plastic basket is sunk two feet into the ground. The Cone stands 28 inches above the ground, collecting sun warmth to encourage the bacteria down below who are chowing on the garbage and seeping the resultant nutrients into the soil. Thanks to the ground seal around the basket, there’s no smell at all, except when you open the top of the Cone to add more yummy garbage for the microbes.

Garden wastes should not go in the Cone, because they would overwhelm it with volume. Nor should paper or plastic products, which is about all you’ll have left in your now light and odorless kitchen trash bin.

-- Stewart Brand 01/15/07

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